Kenney, a local farmer who raises chickens in Sealy, Texas, and sells the eggs at Houston farmers markets, wanted to donate 80 pounds of frozen chicken. I agreed to meet her in a Target parking lot at Fry Road and I-10 in Katy.

I-10 at Eldridge Parkway was backed up for miles. Floodwaters were deep on both sides of the freeway, blocking several lanes. Boats were parked on off-ramps and feeder roads, their owners still making rescues in the neighborhoods affected by the controversial controlled release from the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, whose 70-year old infrastructure, designed for a smaller, less developed city, was threatened by Harvey's deluge.

Past Eldridge, it was a surprisingly quick run to Fry Road. With the chicken in back, I headed to the Heights. Though Presidio had been closed for the last several days, co-owner and chef Adam Dorris had been cooking hot meals for Harvey relief.

When I arrived, the staff was busy prepping the restaurant to reopen that evening. Dorris put the chicken in water to thaw. Even though his restaurant was going to be open, he still planned on spending his mornings cooking meals for first responders and survivors.

At 12:30 p.m., my dad, who had managed to get back to his house, texted, "Water only rose about a foot more. So believe we have dodged the bullet for now." But he was worried about his mother-in-law's house.

Then Knight texted asking if I could help make sandwiches. He could no longer cook because Les Ba'get's staff was deep cleaning the kitchen in anticipation of opening the next day. Restaurants operate on thin margins, so being closed for several days, like many restaurants were in the days following the storm, is a major financial burden: rent, utilities, vendors and staff still need to be paid. And still these restaurateurs were generous.

When I arrived at Les Ba'get, the dining room was buzzing with chatter and the sounds of knives and spoons clinking against glass jars. Two rows of tables had been set up and a diverse group was lined up on both sides of the tables making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I grabbed a knife and a spoon and started slathering.

As the sandwiches were loaded in cars headed for George R. Brown, we cleaned the dining room and gathered supplies to be moved to the Midtown Kitchen Collective. Around 8 p.m., owner Cat Huynh arrived to lock up. He graciously offered us beer.

Thursday, Aug. 31

Like Knight, Adam Brackman, a partner at Axelrad and New Living, found himself performing boat rescues.

Also, like Knight, he wanted to do more. Not only did he put a call out to some friends in the Cajun Navy, he donated the use of a building he co-owned: the former SEARCH homeless shelter at Fannin and McGowen.

Photo: Emily Jaschke

Volunteers came together at the Midtown Kitchen Collective to prepare, source and distribute food to Harvey victims across the region.

Volunteers came together at the Midtown Kitchen Collective to...

In the upper floors, he housed the Cajun Navy. The first floor became central command for the Midtown Kitchen Collective.

When I arrived there Thursday morning, Knight, chef Dimitri Voutsinas (who grew up in Queens and will be helming the kitchen in the soon-to-open Emmaline on West Dallas), several professional cooks and a handful of amateurs like me were already stirring pots and chopping vegetables. After prepping beets and dicing onions, I jumped into the dish pit to spend the day scrubbing pots, cutting boards and sheet pans.

From there, I witnessed nonstop hustle and bustle. There was the constant din of the pros shouting "corner," "behind," "knife," and "hot" — sounds familiar to anyone who has been in a restaurant kitchen on a busy Saturday night.

On the other side of the swinging doors separating the kitchen from the former dining hall, 30 to 40 volunteers were prepping countless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, meat and cheese sandwiches and tacos.

And sommelier Cat Nguyen was organizing crates of onions, jars of mayonnaise and redirecting donated meat to available refrigerator space. Nguyen, who couldn't get to her apartment, had spent the last few days as one of the key people organizing the restaurant industry's relief efforts and was now setting up a pop-up "grocery store" where area chefs could acquire the ingredients they needed to prepare meals for those affected by Harvey.

Photo: David Leftwich

Piles of donated rice and rice noodles at the Midtown Kitchen Collective.

Piles of donated rice and rice noodles at the Midtown Kitchen...

All day, I watched a steady stream of food donations flow by on dollies and carts with defective wheels, all headed to Nguyen's "store" — crates of spinach; tubes of frozen ground local Wagyu beef; cans of powdered mashed potatoes; 10-pound boxes of pasta; two-pound cans of tomatoes; cases of off-brand mayonnaise; 50-pound bags of rice; 25-pound bags of carrots.

A cross section of the large, complex food system required to feed a city like Houston.

Around 12:30, Plant It Forward Farms tagged me in a Twitter post. Most of the crops on their three Houston farms had been destroyed by the storm. But the Congolese-refugee farmers still wanted to donate the 100 pounds of okra they managed to harvest. Knight and his team turned them into gumbo — another one of those very Houston moments.

By the end of the day, several thousand hot meals and thousands of sandwiches and tacos and been prepared and delivered to hospitals, first responders and shelters in the Houston area, Beaumont and Port Arthur.

And Knight, Small, Nguyen, Van Horn, Ferrante, Jonathan Beitler, Claudia Solis, Matthew Wettergreen and several others had set up a command center at a counter in the dining hall.

For the next 10 days, they used this makeshift collection of computers, whiteboards, and Post-It notes to field hundreds of requests from the website they established Tuesday: I Have Food I Need Food. They managed hundreds of volunteers and coordinated the acquisition, delivery and distribution of thousand and thousands of pounds of donated meat, produce and dry goods.

Photo: Emily Jaschke

Volunteers at the Midtown Kitchen Collective (in the former SEARCH Homeless Services building at 2505 Fannin) improvised to keep track of all the donations and deliveries.

Volunteers at the Midtown Kitchen Collective (in the former SEARCH...

And, most importantly, they oversaw the production and delivery of more than 250,000 meals to a region in crisis.

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